Scams are frequently in the news – rarely does a day go by without a sad story on a newsfeed telling us about some innocent person losing a pile of money (and their self-respect) to some unscrupulous little self-entitled low-life.
Emails and internet scams used to be the poison of choice by the scammers, but many people are now waking up to it, and with all the ads everywhere warning us of what to look out for, the scammers have moved on to using text messages to part us from our money and other things of value.
While scams are designed to separate us from our money, its little brother, spam, robs us of other things. In fact, spam takes up so much of our time that it often feels like we’re drowning in it. It steals our time and attention and distracts us from the important things we should be doing. Rarely does it actually provide any form of value.
If scams or spamming are constant companions that you’d like to be free of, and who wouldn’t, help is at hand!
The NZ Department of Internal Affairs has created the means to report both. Click here to learn more.
Remember, scammers and spammers only succeed if we give them oxygen. If we all work on fighting them by reporting and not responding to their stupid messages, they’ll hopefully find other things to do with their time, like finding a legitimate job and working for a living.
Yeah, I’m living in La La Land, I know, and leopards don’t change their spots, but if our government is investing money in stopping them, or at least slowing them down, we should do what we can to help too.
Step one: Forward TXT spam to 7726
Forward the spam message from your phone free of charge to our shortcode: 7726. - See above videos if unsure how to do this on your phone.
You will receive a TXT response from the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) asking you to complete your report.
Step two: Reply to the TXT message and include the sender's phone number
DIA will send you a message asking you to complete your report. Please reply to the message with the phone number the spam message originated from.
Your report will still be registered even if you do not reply with the sender number of the spam message you received.
The message from DIA will contain a hyperlink to the mobi site. The mobi site will explain what happens to your complaint and also contains their Privacy Policy, contact information and links back to the DIA website